Abortion Cases of the 19th Century :: Essays Papers

Abortion Cases of the 19th CenturyAlthough abortions were very dangerous, as well as soci all in ally unacceptable during the nineteenth century, women were not exclusively unable to obtain abortions and many suffered accusations of infanticide. Here I pull up stakes map a few of the more famous cases from the period, demonstrating the occurrence of abortion, the availability of providers, and the consequences go about by those who necessitated the procedure. One case that dominated the pages of The Revolution, the paper owned by Susan B. Anthony and edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, was the sentencing of a young girl to hang for the termination of her child. While not a case of abortion, the death was termed an infanticide and drew real opinions from the public as well as both the editors. The unfortunate Hester Vaughan, an incline girl living in Philadelphia, was discovered in a critical tenement room devoid of furniture February 8, 1868, forty-eight ho urs after liberal birth. Alone during labor, without food or heat, she was found frail and feverish with her bilk dead beside her. She was immediately brought to the police and imprisoned, under the assumption that she had killed her child. For thirty dollars, she acquired the work of a lawyer by the name of Goforth and underwent a brief trial. Having never actually confessed to committing the crime, she was nonetheless sentenced to death by County Judge Ludlow, and placed in Moyamensing Prison until her execution. Once news of the case reached the public, the women of The Revolution unleashed their sympathies in condition after article denouncing the indictment. In an August 6, 1868 editorial it was written If that worthless child of sorrow is hung, it will be deliberate, downright murder. Her death will be far more horrible infanticide than was the killing of her child. She is the child of our society and civilization, begotten and born of it, seduced by it, by the judge who pronounced her sentence, by the bar and jury, by the legislature that enacted the law (in which because a woman, she had no suffrage or voice), by the church and the pulpit that sanctify the law and deeds, of all these will her blood, yea, and her virtue too, be required All these were the joint seducer, and straight off see if by hanging her, they will also become her murderer.However, Hester never had to face the day of her execution and instead spent nearly dickens years in jail.